Do Business Well

As you might expect, great managers take a welcomingly pragmatic view of our innate imperfection. They begin with an important distinction, a distinction between weaknesses and nontalents. A nontalent is a mental wasteland. It is a behavior that always seems to be a struggle. It is a thrill that is never felt. It is an insight recurrently missed. In isolation, nontalents are harmless. You might have a nontalent for remembering names, being empathetic, or thinking strategically. Who cares? You have many more nontalents than you do talents, but most of them are irrelevant. You should ignore them.

However, a nontalent can mutate into a weakness. A nontalent becomes a weakness when you find yourself in a role where success depends on your excelling in an area that is a nontalent. If you are a server in a restaurant, your nontalent for remembering names becomes a weakness because regulars want you to recognize them. If you are a salesperson, your nontalent for empathy becomes a weakness because your prospects need to feel understood. If you are an executive, your nontalent for strategic thinking becomes a weakness because your company needs to know what traps or opportunities lie hidden over the horizon. You would be wise not to ignore your weaknesses.

Great managers don’t. As soon as they realize that a weakness is causing the poor performance, they switch their approach. They know that there are only three possible routes to helping the person succeed.

Devise a support system. Find a complementary partner. Or find an alternative role. Great managers quickly bear down, weigh these options, and choose the best route.

Devise a Support System

Approximately 147 million Americans are incapable of seeing with twenty-twenty vision. Seven hundred years ago anyone cursed with farsightedness, shortsightedness, or astigmatism would have been seriously handicapped. But as the science of optics developed, it became possible to grind lenses that could correct for these conditions. These lenses were then mounted in frames to make spectacles or glasses. And with this one invention, the weakness of imperfect vision was reduced to an irrelevant nontalent. Millions of Americans still suffer from imperfect vision, but armed with the support system of glasses or contact lenses, nobody cares.

The speediest cure for a debilitating weakness is a support system. If one employee finds it difficult to remember names, buy him a Rolodex. If another is an appalling speller, make sure she always runs spell check before she prints. Mandy M., the manager of the design department, describes one effective consultant who undermined her own credibility by always wearing trendy coveralls. Mandy took her shopping and made sure she had at least one presentable business suit that could be worn in front of clients. Jeff B., the sales manager for the computer software company, saw one of his salespeople’s performance slipping because of pressures at home—the salesperson’s wife was upset that he was receiving so many business calls on their personal line. Jeff bought him a second line and told him to designate one room in his house as an office, to define set hours when the office door would be shut, and to turn off the ringer during those hours.

Marie S., a general insurance agent, had to contend with a superbly productive agent who not only wielded a huge ego, but also spread negativity around him every time he was back in the office. Her solution?

Cut a new door in his office wall that opened directly onto the elevator hallway and then mount a plaque over the door announcing the agent’s name in classic gold lettering. With one stroke she not only fulfilled his ego needs, she also diverted him directly into his office and away from his negative wanderings.

This solution may seem a little extreme, but whether they are cutting holes in walls or simply buying Rolodexes, these managers are all doing the same thing: they are managing around the employee’s weakness so that they can spend time focusing on his strengths. As with all focus on strength strategies, devising a support system is more productive and more fun than trying to fix the weakness.

Occasionally a support system can serve a different purpose. A large restaurant chain had made a commitment to hiring a certain number of mentally retarded employees, believing that they could find these individuals some simple yet meaningful work. Their altruism occasionally proved rather difficult to execute in the real world. The president describes one individual, Janice, who was employed to unpack chicken, place each piece carefully in the fryer, and then lift them all out once the timer had sounded. Janice was fully capable of understanding the responsibilities of the role and performed its mechanics perfectly. But she couldn’t count. And unfortunately the fryer could hold only six pieces of chicken. More often than not Janice would overfill the fryer, leaving each piece of chicken dangerously undercooked.

The company could have easily given up on Janice because of her inability to count. But they chose not to. Instead they devised a simple support system to manage around her weakness: they asked their chicken supplier to send the chicken in packages of six. This way Janice wouldn’t have to count. She could just empty each packet into the fryer, and the chicken would be cooked to perfection every time. The supplier refused the request. “It will be too much work on our end,” they complained.

So the company fired the supplier and engaged another that was willing to ship chicken in packets of six. Now nobody cares that Janice can’t count. Her weakness is irrelevant; it is now a nontalent.

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